Blog Posts From The Brave Programmer

So you want to monetise your blog do you?

Apr15

Written by:2009/04/15 09:18 AM

I see a lot of questions on monetising blogs. How do you monetise you blog? What ads do you put on? How much should you charge? I'm not making enough money from adverts. I think a lot of people have missed the point. Its not about how much money you can make on your site/blog. It’s about how will it benefit the advertiser.

I have some adsense, and one banner add from an add network on my site. None of them bring in large amounts of money. In fact I only get paid out the minimum every three to four months.

So what do I mean? For an advertiser, its all about ROI (return on investment). Think about it, why would or should an advertiser advertise on your blog.

Are you credible in you market or niche?

Do you have the traffic stats to prove worthy of advertising?

What is your bounce rate? Is it worth an advertisers while from an administrative point of view to invest a small amount in your relatively unknown and low traffic site?

Build up crediility

I think the way to monetise your blog is to first build up credibility, build up traffic, and build up readership. If you can show to potential advertisers that you get 10 000 page views a month, and 3 000 unique visitors a month, for example. They might be interested. You have to show that your stats are genuine and not faked. You have to prove constancy, and not be a one hit wonder.

You have to be in the same market ball park as those who are potential advertisers. I write about web development, Programming, technology. I am not going to get Johnson & Johnson to advertise baby products on my site.

Build up traffic.

I just recently wrote a blog post on faking traffic on a site or blog. The situation is obviously trying to monetise ones blog. By showing potential advertisers that you have a high traffic site will go a long way. But as I pointed out, these stats can be faked. Just having high traffic stats does not guarantee advertisers will look at you. Your stats have to be proven. Read it, you might be surprised.

In that post I surmise how much traffic one would need in order to make a living out of advertising. Normally adverts are either on a PPC or CPM basis. Mostly the CPM, costs per thousand, are the most used. With four or five small ads on your site, and the correct amount of traffic. It would be easy to make money.

But advertisers are getting smart, they are no longer just looking at traffic, and page views. They are looking at other metrics. They want real returns. So if they do advertise on your site, but see no returns from it, you can bet you bottom dollar that they will cancel.

Once your blog has gained in readership and page views, even joining a advertising network will bring in the moola. That’s without any effort from you. Without you having to solicit ads.

Conclusion.

Remember this: a blog worth advertising on will have adverts on.

So what’s the point? The point is, as I learnt earlier on, not to worry about monetising your blog. Worry about building it up. Worry about building credibility, about gaining readership. Once you have built your blog up, once you have gained that genuine 3000 - 5000 or so readership. Then people will be interested. Then monetising your blog will not be a problem.

Thanks so much for the points on making money with my blogs. I'm working to build my readership AND to build my expertise in the fields around my niche. My plans are to have the blogs built up to start generating income through them by May.

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